Colleges: get involved today

Applications have now closed for the WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence.

WorldSkills UK and NCFE had been inviting applications from Further Education colleges to apply to join the Centre of Excellence 3-year pilot programme. Our commitment is to provide institutions with:

Access to a WorldSkills UK High-Performance Skills Coach to work with teaching staff to support developments towards world-class standards of excellence.

A flexible and tailored CPD programme to mainstream excellence through peer to peer coaching, mentoring, masterclasses and hands on exposure to skills competitions to support the development world-class expertise.

Access to a global network of leading skills educators and professionals to collaborate, network and transfer skills and knowledge.

Subject to successful completion of the pilot programme, institutions will receive the WSUK kitemark of Excellence.

Who could apply?

We are committed in the first year to provide 20 institutions with an opportunity to be assigned to a WorldSkills UK High Performance Skills Coach. We are not in a position to accept applications from groups for multiple locations.

Criteria for selection

As part of the selection process, based on the review of the volume of high-quality applications we will, at our discretion, consider the regional spread across the country and consider inspection ratings, vocational areas of curriculum and specialisms.

General FE colleges with an excess of 1,000 16-18-year olds in learning and a curriculum offer covering a broad spread of sectors.

No requirement to have previously participated in WSUK competitions or deliver NCFE qualifications.

We will review participating colleges case by case as to whether we can provide financial assistance.

Commitments

We are also looking for institutions to demonstrate:

Commitment from the Principal, and preferably College Corporation.

Ability to commit to the Centre of Excellence pilot programme for the duration of the three-years (subject to annual review).

Capacity to release annually five members of staff from across the organisation each for c.10 days engagement in the pilot (non-teaching time) plus other time to implement programme activities as part of the teaching role. (There will be an element of flexibility to explore this further as part of the recruitment process). The college should identify the five teaching staff to be involved.

Agreement to share anonymised data and feedback on educators / learners engaged and benefitting from the pilot programme.

Pledge to support dissemination of best practice with institutions to demonstrate outcomes and to work with WSUK to achieve impact and sustainability.

We consider a college’s skill preferences based on the locations of our skills coaches but can’t guarantee a match for all colleges.